Android development was originally shown on a Blackberry style device, and I highly doubt webOS, and the palm pre were in development long before the iPhone despite what John Rubenstein says. It was a failed attempt to answer the iPhone.
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Apple Seeking $2.5 Billion from Samsung in U.S. Patent and Design Infringement Trial
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Android development was originally shown on a Blackberry style device, and I highly doubt webOS, and the palm pre were in development long before the iPhone despite what John Rubenstein says. It was a failed attempt to answer the iPhone.
False, it was shown on both WM esque (I don't know why people repeat the BB mantra when the prorotype was HTC hardware used with WM) AND on touch only prototypes
What "direction did Apple go" exactly that you mean so that we can point to you the advances in that direction that already been made ? Your initial comment lacked context to provide information.
Android development always stayed its course, as set in 2003 by Andy Rubin : to make a hardware agnostic operating system that could run on a multitude of phone form factors. This is what Google bought in 2005. The iPhone didn't change this basic premise.
So maybe provide us with a bit of insight into what you meant when you said the following :
There were many phones in the pipeline dating at LEAST to 2004. I'm aware of one company in specific that was most definitely going in the same direction as Apple.
And how long companies have taken to catch up? Purely subjective. I'd say some of the companies not only caught up but have passed Apple in many respects. Again - subjective.
Also subjective is your "reasonable and likely" scenario. Like I said - it's very easy to make a claim that can and will never be proven. It's ok to admit that we will never know what the landscape would look like without the iPhone. I know it might be a scary thought for some given how their idevices are members of the family.
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It makes me both chuckle and feel a bit frustrated when people blindly accept other people's board posts as gospel and then perpetuate those ideas as facts without ever actually doing any research. Which is why I appreciate people like you who don't just make subjective statements - but give fact based accounts.
The iPhone was announced in January 2007. Right?
Samsung had a phone already approved by the FCC (August 2006) called the Z610 which had a touch screen and combined a music player and phone in one device (which also an office suite, camera and bluetooth.
http://techtickerblog.com/2006/08/29/samsung-z610-music-phone/
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/29/samsungs-touchscreen-sgh-z610-sees-fcc-approval/
So I guess we actually can see where some companies were headed.
It takes a long time to create a phone. It doesn't happen overnight. Or even in a month or two. And engineers (both hardware and software) have always built upon previous advancements. It's the evolution of technology. You can apply whatever conspiracy theories you want - but many companies - every single day - are improving their products. In many cases they aren't copying each other. They are simply taking the next logical step.
Another thing to keep in mind is that production costs prohibited the use of touchscreens and other components until a certain time in history. And as soon as the cost became reasonable - it was only natural that anyone and everyone would take advantage of it.
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I'm sure it had nothing to do with being the Invention of the Year in 2007 by Time Magazine. Of course people didn't at the time know it would be named as such, but several consumers including me thought it was a revolution. One worth paying a hefty price for. People didn't wait for days on end for it just because they were fans of Apple, they were fans of the product.
Also using your logic one could generalize how a core Android fanbase is the reason Android is popular.. It's the most popular phone OS in the world because it's made up of mindless fans. It's easy to make generalizations when you're so full of bs that you can practically taste it.
My point being, Google and Apple each made innovations that really no one can discount. Now be it that it may, both copied from each other, one more than other, who knows? I'll let the courts figure that out. All we know for sure by devices and photos within the same period is that Android was radically different and headed in the direction of Blackberry before iPhone's development. We also know before it was snapped up under Google, Eric Schmidt also conveniently was an Apple board member likely privy to the development of the iPhone.
As a consumer I'll worry about which device provides better value personally and just like in 2007, the iPhone does. Just don't brainlessly attack iOS users because YOU can't get over the fact that Apple innovated, note this does not always mean inventing.
Despite all the rambling like this, I'd like to know SPECIFICALLY what the first iPhone had that my HTC Tilt did not, other than the extremely good marketing power / hype of Apple. I've listed the NUMEROUS things that the HTC could do that the iPhone could not that made it "revolutionary." Consumer sales does NOT make a phone revolutionary.
Yeah - I'm waiting....
Device consolidation was something I was already looking at in 2005-2006. Sony Ericsson had their dumb phones with a "walkman" branded MP3 player and the phones could do POP3 and IMAP e-mail over GPRS/Edge, had J2ME/Symbian stacks for application development and an, albeit limited web browser.
These weren't smartphones, these were 50$ on 2 year contract feature phones. My T610 in 2003 had some of this already but the W810i is where it really started to come together.
So no, device consolidation is not something Apple brought to the industry, this was already panning out.
Furthermore, the button-less all touch screen phone was not something new Apple brought to the industry either. The Sony Ericsson P-series was exactly that, since 2002
UGH, I had a lengthy response to all 5 of you but accidentally deleted it trying to converge the replies into one so here's the cliff notes version. The iPhone's capacitive touch display, and multitouch user interface changed the course of the mobile industry. No one can say for sure what Andy Rubin was really trying to do with Android. But I really find it interesting that Eric Schmidt was on Apples board of directors when the iPhone debuted, yet people say that had no influence whatsoever on the future development of Android. It's hard to say where we would be with or without the iPhone but a "a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and mapsinto one small and lightweight handheld device." had never been done before prior to the iPhone. Sure other phones did e-mail, WAP based web browsing, and mobile music, but nothing on the level of the iPhone.
I guess you think Steve Jobs and the Apple Board are idiots then for having Schmidt on the board. And further - you would think that if there was an actual issue - he would have been sued? Trotting out the fact that E.S. was on the board being suspect is very Oliver Stone.
Keep trying to force that square peg into the round hole though.
The problem is: the apple fanboy continues to believe that without the iPhone, no other maker would have made a full touchscreen candybar phone.
We've already seen enough evidence, device designs, stories and ideas throughout this thread alone, Not including the millions of other sites over the internet, that many different companies were already doing this exact same thing.
Convergance of everyone's mobile needs into a candy bar shaped phone with touch screen capabilities.
We've seen samsung, google, HTC and what not, all attempting to make this device themselves too.
Apple was just the company with the Industrial design, Marketing, and "forethought" to buy up the other companies to help make the device come to fruition a little faster. Apple also had an entire produc tline of succesful ipods' in which they could take inspiration from, and build on that momentum. They weren't starting from scratch.
Did Apple help kick the door wide open for everyone else? Absolutely and anyone who can't at leaset admit that might be a fandroid.
The absolute amazing thing is just how shockingly fast mobile technology has developed. we're talking about major advancements happening almost monthly it seems. Cell phone technology wasn't a common household item until the late 90's, or even early 00's. I didnt get my first cell phone till 2001 (only 11 years ago). And to think that the "tech of choice" in the90's was the pager.
From the day i got my first Cell. A simple flip phone that could text message and make calls. I wanted more. I already had it in my mind that if i could converge all my devices into ONE, the phone would be it. A mobile communication device, Mp3 player and PDA. All things i carried with me constantly.
Every new phone after that which I bought, brought more and more of this functionality to the Cell. Camera as the first thing added (theyw ere terrible at the time). Then Mp3, and then PDA. And surprisingly, Do you know who made the first phone for me that incorporated all of the 3? Was it Apple? No. It was R.I.M's blackberry. (but wait a second, I thought Apple was the innovator of the smartphone!). So what did Apple bring? Touch screen? Perhaps they made the jump to Capacitive touch screen first, But they weren't the first to use a touch screen on a phone or PDA. Touch screens have been around a lot longer than the smartphone. I had a Palm in the 90's... and it had a touch screen.
As I said, Apples ability to market, and come up with great industrial designs, while making products that have what people wants is the best. They know how to make things look good and work together.
But I truly don't believe, and nobody else really should that they are this great inventor. That they were doing anything that nobody else was working towards.
We've already seen enough evidence, device designs, stories and ideas throughout this thread alone, Not including the millions of other sites over the internet, that many different companies were already doing this exact same thing.
Convergance of everyone's mobile needs into a candy bar shaped phone with touch screen capabilities.
We've seen samsung, google, HTC and what not, all attempting to make this device themselves too.
Apple was just the company with the Industrial design, Marketing, and "forethought" to buy up the other companies to help make the device come to fruition a little faster. Apple also had an entire produc tline of succesful ipods' in which they could take inspiration from, and build on that momentum. They weren't starting from scratch.
Did Apple help kick the door wide open for everyone else? Absolutely and anyone who can't at leaset admit that might be a fandroid
.The absolute amazing thing is just how shockingly fast mobile technology has developed. we're talking about major advancements happening almost monthly it seems. Cell phone technology wasn't a common household item until the late 90's, or even early 00's. I didnt get my first cell phone till 2001 (only 11 years ago). And to think that the "tech of choice" in the90's was the pager.
From the day i got my first Cell. A simple flip phone that could text message and make calls. I wanted more. I already had it in my mind that if i could converge all my devices into ONE, the phone would be it. A mobile communication device, Mp3 player and PDA. All things i carried with me constantly.
Every new phone after that which I bought, brought more and more of this functionality to the Cell. Camera as the first thing added (theyw ere terrible at the time). Then Mp3, and then PDA. And surprisingly, Do you know who made the first phone for me that incorporated all of the 3? Was it Apple? No. It was R.I.M's blackberry. (but wait a second, I thought Apple was the innovator of the smartphone!). So what did Apple bring? Touch screen? Perhaps they made the jump to Capacitive touch screen first, But they weren't the first to use a touch screen on a phone or PDA. Touch screens have been around a lot longer than the smartphone. I had a Palm in the 90's... and it had a touch screen.
As I said, Apples ability to market, and come up with great industrial designs, while making products that have what people wants is the best. They know how to make things look good and work together.
But I truly don't believe, and nobody else really should that they are this great inventor. That they were doing anything that nobody else was working towards.
Are you aware that it was Steve Jobs who invited Schmidt to join the Apple board at a time when it was well known that Google had acquired Android and was developing it as their own mobile OS? Are you saying Steve Jobs was an idiot to invite "the enemy" in?
For all we know, it could be the other way around; Schmidt told Jobs about what was planned for Android, Jobs ordered the iOS team to implement it and so beat Google to it.
Point is, we don't know but what is the most interesting thing is that neither Jobs nor anyone else at Apple has ever accused Schmidt of using knowledge he may have obtained at the Apple board in a wrongful way.
Btw, in some ways the original iPhone did all of those things worse than the other phones on the market since it lacked 3G. Full HTML browsing is worthless on a device that is limited to EDGE and WAP makes a lot more sense for such a device.
I just think it's very suspect considering how Android turned out. I'm neither for or against the OS, but competition benefits everyone as long as they invent their own stuff.
I don't think Apple, and the board are idiots at all because there's no way of knowing what will happen in the future, and Google at the time didn't have a competing product. I don't think ES should be sued personally either considering that Jobs issue was with Google as a whole, and not just ES. That and you'd assume the 2 companies could work things out in a civilized manner but alas look where that has taken them. Jobs promised to go to "Thermonuclear war" against Android. The bottom line is that there's no real way of knowing where we'd be with or without the iPhone I'll admit that much. However the likelihood of us being where we are now without the iPhone is less likely.
For the patents, yes Samsung is just trying to charge a percentage. Apple is arguing that it is against FRAND, whether is really is a point of debate, though I think even you have to agree that paying twice as much royalty for 3G for a 64 GB Ipad then a 16 GB ipad is more then a little silly. Everything on here is part of the court case, look it up if you like.
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No, the issue with Samsung, is that they are selling the patent to everyone who buys the part at < $1, anybody who doesnt buy that part, but Apple doesnt buy the part from them (they can't use everyones part guys), so they want to charge them 2.4% of the retail cost of the item the patent is in. That is just crazy if Apple made a $50,000 iCar, do you think Samsung should get $1200 royalties because it has 3G builtin, or should they get the same royalty they get if Apple had bought the 3G part from Samsung?
Ok, so the "road taken by Apple", to you, is touchscreen technology and multi-touch. What then about the devices kdarling showed that were headed in that same direction ?
This is the post in question. It quite shows that Apple headed in a direction the industry was already investigating as a possible future, Apple just chose this route, it didn't "create it" :
So really, we don't know if even without Apple we wouldn't have had this stuff anyhow. You had a lenghty post that detailed what exactly ? Did you even know about this stuff ?
As for your attacks on Eric Schmidt, they are again pure fantasy from some in the Apple community of users, it is not a sentiment Apple shared at all. Apple knew of Android when they brought Eric in and Eric and the board made sure that his involvement did not reveal any secrets that would have put him in such a conflict. He resigned from the board when this situation made it impossible to continue working with Apple.
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I often use that phone as an example of an early touchscreen "candy bar" form factor in these threads too, but I omitted it as it wasn't really aimed at consumers back then and didn't have the deep subsidies the iPhone has enjoyed ever since its original price drop.
My question was if they only charge a percentage to Apple not if they charges a percentage
Little silly? Perhaps, but it is what ALL the other FRAND licensees have been doing from decades.
How would it be Fair and Reasonable for Apple to pay less than other device makers ? Under FRAND, Samsung charges other industry players a certain perccentage of the device's price, not the chipset's price.
Why would Apple get a better deal ?
Apple isn't against the FRAND terms, they're just testing the waters to try and leverage a better price than everyone else. Same as they did with Nokia. In the end, they settled and paid.
I'd love to see you source that theory. We pay royalties on all kinds of items and every single one of them is on a per unit basis (which are also audited btw) and not based on gross sales, and again Samsung isnt basing there royalties on gross sales, they are basing them on retail sales numbers which arent available from Apple obviously, so they are taking unit sales by type (from apple) and multiplying by retail price and I really would love to for you to show me another example of that outside the cell phone world.
I'm not twisting my logic at all. Samsung makes a part for cell phones it sells for about $1, it includes the rights to the Samsung 3G patents as well as all other 3G patents (Motorola etc), you buy that $1 part put it in your phone, you have no issues with any of the 3G consortium. Apple doesnt use the Samsung baseband processor because they use someone elses, Samsung thinks that Apple should pay Samsung up to $20 a unit for 3G, just for there patents (and samsung doesnt have very many), if Motorola said gee you should pay us more Apple (they have alot of the patents), you would have trouble arguing it, and pretty soon we are at the $100 or more on royalties for something others are getting for less then $1.
They can't put everyones $1 part in the phone, Samsung has one, Motorola has one, etc. What has happened if you have been following the 3G fight is that Apple has picked a part for each iPhone which is fully licensed with all 3G patents, buys those, makes the phone and then one or more of the 3G patent consortium has pulled the license from Apples chip manufacturer (with regard to Apple), wanting Apple to pay them directly for the patents instead of buying parts and them being paid that way. Its the entire reason for the FRAND case between Motorola Mobility and Apple in Germany as well as Seattle.
I'm saying that the Fingerworks patents were not necessary to create the iPhone.
This is obvious just from the fact that other phone makers did fine without any Fingerworks involvement.
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I've read all the Fingerworks patents. Do you know of any that existed prior to Apply buying them, that would apply to the iPhone?
Westerman himself has said, "The one difference that's actually quite significant is the iPhone is a display with the multi-touch, and the FingerWorks was just an opaque surface."
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Certainly, the general touch knowledge of the people behind Fingerworks, Westerman and Elias, would've been very useful to Apple.
Quite possibly, FingerWorks patents have been useful to Apple in other venues. They could more easily apply to trackpads and touch surface mice, and some of the whole hand gesture research could apply to larger surfaces like the iPad.
Regards.
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Have no idea what you mean here.
Not true at all, as I said I havent ever paid a percentage for license FRAND or not FRAND, and since FRAND is a fairly recent idea, others havent been paying FRAND percentage royalties for decades.
Paying Apple $100 more for $25 more of memory is also silly, but it's done
It's difficult for Apple to get much sympathy when they're making the majority of profit margins, while only selling higher priced phones, and charging customers huge markups for relatively small parts price increments.
That's a major reason why ETSI went along with charging royalties by price: it helped keep phone prices reasonable. Otherwise cell phones would not have been adopted as they have worldwide, and Apple wouldn't have had a ready made market and infrastructure for their iPhone on the backs of all the cell pioneers before them.
ETSI FRAND does not require any particular kind of deal. It only requires that everyone can get the same deal (subject to quantity, credit rating, cross licensing, etc).
When the GSM designers first got together, Motorola had the majority of the patents. Interestingly, instead of setting rates by phone price, or charging standalone high rates, they only licensed them in one of two ways:
- You got a license if you bought Motorola chips or assemblies, or if
- You entered into a cross-license agreement, in which case you had to pay no royalties.
That was considered fair, reasonable and available to everyone. However, there were companies that neither wanted to buy Motorola parts nor to cross-license with them. Since that would not be as beneficial to Motorola, they fell back on the usual rates by phone price.
Sounds like Samsung subscribes to the same pricing methods. As long as those methods are available to everyone, it's considered FRAND.
The question now is, can Apple exert enough influence to force ETSI to add royalty method restrictions. (There are none now.) That's doubtful through ETSI alone, so Apple is trying to force government involvement. I'm not sure that's wise. It could backfire on them later on.
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I've negotiated a lot of agreements - comp discussion always start out using percentage sales. It's typically for late stage tech supplier agreements that with associated patents where you tend to get fixed unit royalites. And these tend to be short term because fixed unit royalties around IP are gamed.
I'd have a hard time sourcing that theory because nearly everything written on royalty negotiations does it on a percentage sales basis. So essentially not enough evidence for your argument. The logic between the two is here on page 1 http://veracap.com/userfiles/file/EstablishingRoyaltyRates.pdf, but more importantly you can look at writers like Parr, Razgeitis, Goldshlager (look up the 25% royalty rule of thumb).
Ya, that's an estimate of gross sales. All of pharma, biotech, chemical, toys, etc.. can work like this.
Look at pharma, if the royalty was a buck a pill they'd put twice the dose in pill, sell it at twice the price and make you take a half. But you have a point, software and music and semicos can be by some other unit (for example "sales" can get funny around music and other information goods).
I didn't know this. But let's say an Apple partner pulls out of the consortium, thus pulling access to Samsungs IP from the components they sold to Apple. Why is that's Samsungs problem? And why didn't Apple mitigate that risk? (...$$$) And why didn't Apple require that the supplier indemnify Apple against 3G litigation? (....$$$)
It's not like these are impossible issues. Apple isn't some naive, cash strapped entrepreneur unwittingly glancing against the patent system.
If anything, your description makes them sound either incompetent or playing fast and loose with their suppliers (and I strongly believe in the 2nd).
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You know, Apple did something kind of amazing with the first iPhone in that they stepped into one of the largest clustermucks of IP in any industry and didn't get their masses sued off.
I wonder if the culture of the phone industry was one of heavy cross-licensing, so when they had a new entrant they didn't know quite how to react. Obviously this is all changing. Nokia and Samsung will start to be much more aggressive. And we may soon see Intel and IBM and MS enter as there is more convergence.
I wonder if the culture of the phone industry was one of heavy cross-licensing, so when they had a new entrant they didn't know quite how to react. Obviously this is all changing. Nokia and Samsung will start to be much more aggressive. And we may soon see Intel and IBM and MS enter as there is more convergence.
Some notes about Eric Schmidt:
- He was invited by Jobs.
- Jobs never claimed he stole anything while on the board.
- Schmidt kept himself away from the Android group.
- Apple needed Google desperately at the time for iPhone search, Maps and YouTube conversions.
- Schmidt only came on the board at the beginning of Sep 2006. Jobs himself said they didn't have a working product in November. So even if the paranoid fantasies were correct, that would've at the most only given Google a few months of heads up before the iPhone was shown to the world in Jan 2007. That's barely a blip in time compared to now, five years later. Android and iOS would be in the same positions.